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NHS: Carpooling on the decline in Canada

Hannah Irving of Kempville, Ont., poses for a portrait in downtown Ottawa on June 25, 2013. Irving has been trying to set up a group to carpool into town with for nine months but has unsuccessfully done so. Photo: Chris Roussakis/Postmedia News

OTTAWA — The number of Canadians driving to work is on the rise, but most drivers aren’t likely to pick up a friend.

Newly released figures from the 2011 National Household Survey show the proportion of people getting to work as passengers in a vehicle fell to 5.6 per cent — a decrease from 7.7 per cent in 2006. At the same time, 74 per cent of Canadians said they drove to work in 2011, up from 72.3 per cent in 2006.

For the first time, survey respondents who said they drove to work were asked how many people usually travelled with them. The majority — 83 per cent — reported driving alone while the remaining 17 per cent said they went via carpool.

The highest proportion of carpoolers live in eastern Canada, including Halifax, St. John’s and Moncton, where more than one in five drivers brought along at least one passenger — 23.5 per cent, 23.2 per cent and 22.7 per cent respectively. The lowest carpooling rates were in Quebec cities including Saquenay (11.1 per cent), Trois Rivieres (11.3 per cent) and Sherbrooke (12.7 per cent). Analysts said more data is needed to understand these regional differences.

The small proportion of carpoolers could be because ride-sharing isn’t a socially normative activity yet, suggested Anne Marie Thornton, director of Trans Canada Carpool.ca, which runs a website that helps western Canadians coordinate carpool groups.

“Carpool programs don’t tend to have a lot of resources,” she said. “They don’t receive a lot of funding so there’s not a lot of marketing and promotion and that makes it challenging to change people’s behaviour.”

Another part of the problem, she said, is the preconception that carpooling doesn’t allow people to be flexible with their schedules.

“Convenience is what motivates people the most,” she said. “If it’s not convenient for people, they won’t do it no matter how much money they might save.”

Ottawa resident Hannah Irving has been trying for almost a year to set up a carpool group for her daily commute to work. Despite signing up with a free carpool matching website, she hasn’t been able to find people to share her trip because no one travels the same route as her and has a compatible schedule.

“I really don’t like the idea of being one person in a five-person car driving back and forth the amount I am,” she said. “I’m creating a very big environmental footprint for one person and I don’t feel good about that, but I don’t know what else to do.”

But despite the challenges associated with carpooling, Lorenzo Mele, board chair of the Association for Commuter Transportation of Canada, said that with “a little bit more investment” and “a more concerted effort on promotion” Canada would likely see an increase in ride sharing.

And Mele says things are already moving in the right direction.

Mele said increasing numbers of high-occupancy vehicle lanes in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec are cutting commute times for people who drive together, and many municipalities are funding initiatives to help residents connect with carpool groups to reduce traffic during peak hours.

The 2011 National Household Survey, to which 2.65 million households responded, replaced the mandatory long-form census. Experts say the voluntary nature of the survey leaves some gaps in the data from groups who do not tend to respond to voluntary surveys, including Aboriginals, new immigrants and low-income families. But despite this, they also say the data should provide a fairly accurate broad scale picture of Canada.

Carpooling by the numbers

Proportion of drivers in major Canadian cities who carry one or more passengers to work: